Heart of Stone: Sinks just like one

Heart of Stone (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for action violence and brief profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

An original thought would die of loneliness in this film’s derivative script.

 

Gal Gadot can’t be blamed for wanting to strike while her star wattage is bright, but she should choose her projects more carefully. 

 

The calm before the storm: This seasoned MI6 team — from left, Bailey (Paul Ready),
Rachel (Gal Gadot), Parker (Jamie Dornan) and Yang (Jing Lusi) — will encounter
serious trouble after arriving in Lisbon.

I’ve also long been wary of poor title credits, as it’s almost always a sign of equally bad things to come … and this film has truly terrible opening credits.

In fairness, it’s not the worst way to spend two hours, for undiscriminating fans of kick-ass spyjinks. But scripters Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder begged, borrowed or stole everything here from superior predecessors … and director Tom Harper’s over-reliance on sub-par CGI doesn’t help.

 

Gadot stars as Rachel Stone, the “mousy” tech member of an MI6 team that includes experienced agents Parker (Jamie Dornan), Yang (Jing Lusi) and Bailey (Paul Ready). They’re introduced during a mission taking place at a ski resort atop a mountain in Italy’s Alpin Arena Senales, tasked with “extracting” Mulvaney (Enzo Cilenti), “Europe’s most wanted arms dealer,” who has surfaced for the first time in three years.

 

Careful planning goes slightly awry, so Rachel is forced to improvise in the field — much to her colleagues’ concern — by getting close enough to clone a baddie’s cell phone. Then things really go wrong, due to the intervention of a mysterious young woman (Alia Bhatt) who is following a different agenda.

 

Rachel therefore is forced to display her true talents as a seasoned member of The Charter, code-named Nine of Hearts: a hyper-capable agent embedded in this team without the knowledge of anybody in MI6. She saves the day — while taking care not to be seen doing so, by her three colleagues — thanks to off-site assistance by Jack of Hearts (Matthias Schweighöfer) and “The Heart,” an immersive, quantum computer AI interface capable of split-second judgment calls based on the highest probability of success.

 

Think Waze or any other satellite navigation system on steroids, able to alert Rachel to human hazards, in addition to feeding her geographical telemetry via special goggles. Suddenly need a snow bike or parachute? The Heart will guide Rachel appropriately.

 

The Charter, divided into four teams code-named for the 52 cards in a deck, is an off-books organization whose agents clandestinely step in “where governments fail.” (That’s a phrase we’ve heard before.)

 

The fact that Rachel has concealed her actual talents for four years — particularly from Parker, Yang and Bailey — seems a bit of a stretch, but we gotta roll with it. The greater good is paramount, as the King of Hearts (Sophie Okonedo) stiffly informs Rachel, during a subsequent de-briefing (a lecture we’ve also heard many times before).

Death on the Nile: Waterlogged

Death on the Nile (2022) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for violence, bloody images and sexual candor

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.11.22

Vanity, thy name is Kenneth Branagh.

 

Bad enough that he dishonors Agatha Christie by turning her shrewdly stoic, sharp-as-a-tack Hercule Poirot, he of the “little gray cells,” into a despondent, uncertain, weeping snowflake with no emotional control: somebody to be scorned, not admired.

 

Newlyweds Simon (Armie Hammer) and Linnet (Gal Gadot) happily tour an Egyptian
bazaar, little realizing that the stalker they've hoped to elude, isn't very far away...

Worse yet, Michael Green’s laughably overcooked and overwrought script makes absolutely hash of Christie’s celebrated 1937 novel, and his efforts at dialogue are remarkably unpersuasive.

At one point, having just acknowledged dropping a massive chunk of stone onto an unwary victim below, one suspect then wails “But I never would have killed her,” despite having just admitted attempting to do that very thing: a statement that goes unchallenged by Poirot and everybody else, which makes them look like fools.

 

That’s probably the worst howler in this egregiously stupid script, but it has plenty of company.

 

And as if all this isn’t enough, Branagh — who also directs — tolerates (encourages?) overacting to such a ludicrous degree, that he telegraphs the plot’s most surprising twist.

 

This may well be the worst big-screen Christie adaptation ever unleashed on an unsuspecting public … and I’m quite mindful of 1965’s dreadful Alphabet Murders — Tony Randall being an equally appalling Poirot — while making this claim.

 

Dame Agatha must be spinning in her grave.

 

This brings us to the issue of assigning early 21st century attitudes on characters who inhabit the 1930s: an “enhancement” that must be handled with care, lest the disconnect become distracting. There certainly isn’t anything wrong — as a positive example — with making two of these suspects lesbian lovers; even if Christie never specifically addressed such a relationship, they certainly existed.

 

But completely changing numerous supporting characters — in name and behavior — is both unnecessary and irritating. 

 

This film also opens with a nightclub display of Miley Cyrus-style “dirty dancing” that is impressively salacious by today’s standards, let alone those of nearly a century ago: a sequence that Branagh allows to go on, and on — and on — long past the point of … well … having made its point.

 

And that’s far from the only sequence that feels wholly out of place.

 

Clearly, since 2017’s similarly “modified” Murder on the Orient Express was such a box office success — grossing more than $350 million worldwide — Branagh’s reprisal of Poirot was inevitable.

 

But good grief … couldn’t all concerned have tried a little harder?

 

Sigh.

Christopher Robin: Endearing, but uneven

Christopher Robin (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.3.18

I’ve long regarded title credits as a strong indication of quality; a director who cares enough to insist upon clever, stylish or (in some manner) unusual credits, generally can be counted upon to give his film the same attention to detail.

Desperate to prevent passersby from realizing that Pooh is a stuffed bear who nonetheless
walks and talks, Christopher (Ewan McGregor) begs his childhood friend to "play taking
a nap."

In that respect, then, director Marc Forster’s Christopher Robin begins auspiciously. An extended prolog is lovingly and warmly animated from the E.H. Shepard illustrations in A.A. Milne’s original Winnie the Pooh books; the sequence also incorporates flipped pages laden with the correct type font. In all respects, it’s like we viewers jump into the book itself and become part of what follows, much in the manner of Jasper Fforde’s delightful Thursday Next novels.

This lengthy, period-appropriate introduction also establishes the firm bond between young Christopher Robin (Orton O’Brien) and his half-dozen plush animal friends, all seemingly hand-stitched, as if by some doting parent. They’ve organized a party in the Hundred Acre Wood, but the occasion is somber: Christopher Robin is heading off to boarding school. The mood is pure “Puff, the Magic Dragon.”

These sweetly animated characters are voiced sublimely, their note-perfect dialog — here, and throughout the entire film — impeccably crafted to match Milne’s blend of innocence and gentle playfulness (with numerous quotes lifted directly from the page). We can’t help being both charmed and saddened; the sweet sorrow of this impending parting is almost more than can be withstood.

Then the movie proper kicks in, and the mood is ... well, badly compromised, if not completely shattered.

The script — credited, with eyebrow-raising concern, to five different hands — is a patchwork mess stitched together with far less care than that given to its animated stars. The plot is a clumsy mash-up of Steven Spielberg’s Hook and Disney’s Mary Poppins — both centering around an adult who has lost track of his childhood sense of wonder — blended with numerous un-subtle nods to the three Disney Winnie the Pooh cartoon shorts produced between 1966 and ’74.

To make matters even worse, this film’s (mostly) soothing tone often is marred by the destructive slapstick sequences that infected so many of Disney’s insufferably stupid late 1960s and early ’70s live-action comedies. The sudden shift in tone can cause whiplash.

In a nutshell, these characters — human and otherwise — are far better than the derivative, wafer-thin and disappointing story into which they’ve been dumped.

The Secret Life of Bees: Strong buzz

The Secret Life of Bees (2008) • View trailer for The Secret Life of Bees
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for violence and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.17.08
Buy DVD: The Secret Life of Bees • Buy Blu-Ray: The Secret Life of Bees [Blu-ray]

Certain historical flashpoints remain popular subjects for stories, because savvy authors recognize that we bring cultural awareness to the relationship between artist and audience: If the fictitious characters are constructed persuasively enough to co-exist with real-world events, the drama becomes even more intense.

August (Queen Latifah, left) is surprised to discover that Lily (Dakota Fanning)
doesn't fear the winged insects that fill the hives and produce the sweet honey
for which the Boatwright sisters have become famous. Indeed, Lily seems to
understand — in a deeply spiritual way — when August speaks reverently of
"the secret life of bees."

Director/scripter Gina Prince-Bythewood's deeply moving adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees is just such a story. Set in 1964 South Carolina, at a time when the rising civil rights movement actually made an already toxic racial environment even more combustible — because, to the hysterical rage of hard-core racists, African-Americans were daring to stand up for themselves — the narrative unfolds in a constant state of tension and suspense.

All sorts of bad things seem to await these good characters.

Grief battles with pragmatism and hope, in a film highlighted by strong performances that allow us intimate and at-times painful access to these characters and their thoughts. And, as was the case with To Kill a Mockingbird — with which this film shares both subject and tone — these events are filtered through the dawning awareness of a child, and her subsequent loss of innocence.

In the case of 14-year-old Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning), she's not that innocent to begin with. As depicted in a brief but horrifying prologue, Lily believes herself responsible for her mother's death, years earlier, and has suffered ever since at the hands of a father, T. Ray (Paul Bettany), prone to casual cruelty.

T. Ray isn't exactly abusive, and we get a strong sense that he, too, is in a state of constant despair — such is the impressive subtlety of Bettany's performance — but that doesn't make his needlessly stern and unloving treatment of Lily any less heinous.

Things might be worse, were if not for the sheltering care extended by Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson), who works for T. Ray and has become something of a surrogate mother to Lily. The girl, in turn, has grown to care for Rosaleen: enough to be quite concerned when the older woman quietly shares her intention to walk to a nearby town and register to vote.

Sadly, an almost inevitable encounter with some vicious white crackers goes as badly as could be expected.

Prince-Bythewood does not exploit this scene, but Rogier Stoffers' camera also doesn't flinch from it; we cannot help sharing Lily's sick and heavy-hearted reaction to what she witnesses. (Bullies are nothing new in the world, I realize, and yet I still find it difficult to comprehend that people would behave this way to another human being, based solely on skin color ... and that such behavior was considered acceptable, as recently as 44 years ago.)

Finally fed up with her own father, and worried about Rosaleen's likely future, Lily orchestrates a plan of escape and the two hit the road. Their destination — Tiburon, also in South Carolina — is governed solely by the fact that this town's name is printed on the back of one of the few mementos Lily has from her mother.